My daughter is 23!

This is the last of 3 fall birthdays here. That cute little clown on the side there, the same girl holding Shadow the Police Pup in the photo below, turned 23 today. Katherine is everything I could have imagined in a daughter. She's Awesome...and I meant to put that capital A there.

We had lunch at a favorite restaurant. We both had Shrimp Francese, although I had mine with rice and she had hers with linquini. Afterwards, we shopped in a little boutique (she didn't get anything but I bought a cute discounted Halloween figurine) and then we went to another store that features bulk candy and I treated her to a bagful.

We also perused an antique store but didn't get anything. (Frankly, after having done the vintage thing in Pennsylvania and Ohio, I could never bring myself to pay 8 times the price for anything here on Long Island.)

My daughter asked me a profound question. She asked if the world has changed much for the worse since I was a kid. She worries that when she is my age, she'll be thinking how much worse it is compared to her young days, now. I told her there is one thing I believe: no matter what the media pushes at you, the vast majority of people are GOOD. And the things we worry will happen, might never happen. For example (I told her), our big worry back in the early 70s was population explosion--how would we feed everyone? Who on earth could have imagined the scientific breakthroughs we have now that have improved agriculture?

And considering that we've had the ability to destroy this planet for roughly 70 years, but we haven't...doesn't that tell you something?

There are things I wish my kids could experience that I experienced. But they have things now that didn't exist when I was a kid. So yeah, there are things that aren't as good...but there are also things that are better. And in the long run, it is the way we raise our kids that determines what the world will be like in the future. My kids are turning out pretty cool, so they are hope for the future.